Who in Germany Are the Prussians?

[Resist]

I'm curious about how Germans see themselves. I read someone said Bavarians consider all non-Southern Germans "Prussians".

What is considered Prussian in Germany, which states?

Is it somehow disputed according to whom you ask, like the word "Yankee" is?

For foreigners, a "yankee" is an American. For American southerners, a "yankee" is a northerner. For northerners, a "yankee" is somebody from New England. For New Englanders, a "yankee" is somebody from Vermont. For Vermonters, a "yankee" is somebody who eats apple pie for breakfast.

[Bärin]

Map of current states of Germany that are completely or mostly situated inside the old borders of Imperial Germany’s Kingdom of Prussia (in dark green):

[Sigurd]

Prussia in 1866, prior to the "Austro-Prussian", i.e. German-German brother war.



Colloquially down south: Everything that's not Bavarian or Alemannic.

[Hauke Haien]

In the narrowest sense, the German colonists in the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, particularly in the area known as (East) Prussia, taking its name from the Old Prussian (West Baltic) tribes they conquered in 1224.

The name was later transferred to the personal union of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia, Brandenburg-Prussia, when it formed the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. In this wider sense, all subjects of the kingdom (-1918) and all citizens of the Free State of Prussia (1918-1947) were considered Prussians.

While practically everything the enemies of Germany hate about Germany originates from Brandenburg-Prussia, Prussia proper also has had a history of its own before that. It is therefore not possible to simply equate the two.

Much of the area shown as Prussian in the map posted by Bärin was not acquired until after the Napoleonic Wars and the German War (1866). Those states are unlikely to consider themselves Prussians today, and are mostly called such by people from light green coloured areas.




Most of the core areas shown above are not FRG territory today.

[Kogen]

Prussia in 1866, prior to the "Austro-Prussian", i.e. German-German brother war.

I am curious why you would consider this a brother war? It was a freeing of the southern states from a German-Slavic and Catholic Empire in the south. Not a single inch of Austrian land was taken by the Prussian army.

[Sigurd]

I am curious why you would consider this a brother war?

First of all because it was fought between Germans and Germans. That other ethnicities may have fought on either side is irrelevant to making it a brothers' war, the fact that two halves of Germany were fighting for power.

If the involvement of the non-German areas of the Habsburg Empire disqualifies this conflict as a brothers' war, then likewise WWI and WWII would be disqualified from that classification, as it was not only Britain & the US and Germany fighting it out, but there was also Italy, Russia, France, Japan and many others involved.

Also note that Prussia was allied with Italy in this war, which led to the cessation of Lombardy and Venetia to Italy by Austria.

Secondly, because a central question was as to which German state - Austria or Prussia - would be the most important German state, this struggle had been going on for a while. The pretext was a supposed breach by Austria of the Gastein Convention about joint governance of Schleswig and Holstein.

Thirdly, and most basically, because "Brüderkrieg" is one of the colloquial terms that are known in Germany for this conflict. It is know as that for a good reason, as Germany was divided between the factions. Here goes a map of which allegiances each side had. The vast majority sided with Austria, actually, rather than Prussia:

It was a freeing of the southern states from a German-Slavic

There were several strands of opinion, some who believed that Austria, but not her Empire should be included in a Greater German Solution.

Secondly - there was no "freeing of southern states", these German states had been allied with Austria, but not been part of it. They placed their hopes in an alliance with Austria out of Free Will, not vassalage.

Thirdly, and most importantly - if it supposedly "freed" some southern states from a multi-ethnic empire, it doomed approximately 10 million Germans in Austria and in parts of Bohemia (later to become known as "Sudetenland"), not to mention many Germans in enclaves outwith the continuous area of German settlement, to just that fate.

and Catholic Empire in the south.

And doomed many Catholic Germans to a Protestant Empire in the north?

Perhaps you are not aware of the religious question in Germany, but most Southern German states are traditionally Catholic, this is also true for some northern states such as parts of Westphalia and small parts of the Rhineland.

Not a single inch of Austrian land was taken by the Prussian army.

No, but a good stretch of Austrian-controlled land was taken by the Italian army, which was allied with the Prussians. It ended with the cessation of Lombardy and Venetia - as a result, thousands of ethnic Germans in these areas, especially bordering Tyrol, were doomed to tyranny by Italians who offered absolutely no protection to their language or customs.

Other than that, of course, not much of Austrian land (only a miniscule stretch in Western Bohemia) was taken by the Prussian army: but because the war was fought for power, not for territory. Prussia had already claimed the lion's share of Silesia more than a hundred years prior, Bohemia was not in her sphere of interest.